Books, Arts & Manners

The Street Lawyer, by John Grisham (Doubleday, 348 pp., $27.95)

THE Washington novel used to be about politics and power, sex and scandal, elections and intrigue among capital insiders. If John Grisham’s latest is anything to go by, the new Washington novel will be, as Washington itself increasingly is, about image. Since the invention of the music video, people seem to have stopped expecting popular entertainment to provide much in the way of plot or characterization or serious themes or, indeed, anything but a succession of stylish figures striking cool attitudes; and Grisham has brought the ethos of the music video to popular fiction. Not that Grisham himself should be blamed for this state of mind. It is everywhere in in Bill Clinton’s Washington. Even Phyllis C. Richman, the restaurant reviewer for the Washington Post, writes of a trendy local eatery: “Look around the dining room . . . and you’ll guess you are seeing academics in D.C. for a conference, journalists not with sources but with gossip pals, lawyers who wouldn’t work for corporations but only for public-interest groups.”

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James Bowman

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The Street Lawyer, by John Grisham (Doubleday, 348 pp., $27.95)

THE Washington novel used to be about politics and power, sex and scandal, elections and intrigue among capital insiders. If John Grisham’s latest is anything to go by, the new Washington novel will be, as Washington itself increasingly is, about image. Since the invention of the music video, people seem to have stopped expecting popular entertainment to provide much in the way of plot or characterization or serious themes or, indeed, anything but a succession of stylish figures striking cool attitudes; and Grisham has brought the ethos of the music video to popular fiction. Not that Grisham himself should be blamed for this state of mind. It is everywhere in in Bill Clinton’s Washington. Even Phyllis C. Richman, the restaurant reviewer for the Washington Post, writes of a trendy local eatery: “Look around the dining room . . . and you’ll guess you are seeing academics in D.C. for a conference, journalists not with sources but with gossip pals, lawyers who wouldn’t work for corporations but only for public-interest groups.”